Social Media

Proton therapy at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin

Patients with eye tumours are being treated with proton beams since June 1998 by the Universitätsklinikum Benjamin Franklin of the Freie Universität Berlin (now: Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin) together with the Hahn-Meitner-Institut (now: Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie) in Berlin. Please have a look at the Charité homepage to get more information about eye tumour therapy.

What our patients need to know

The total incidence in Germany for eye tumours amounts to 500 or 600 per year. So far, more than 2,000 patients with ocular disease have been treated at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB) at a high quality level. Especially, we succeed to destroy the tumour in more than 97% of the patients. This way we could salvage not only the eye but, in most cases, maintain the patient's visual acuity by a satisfying degree.

The proton irradiation centre at the HZB is Germany's first proton therapy facility and unique in its technical capability. High-precision irradiation that makes use of high-energy proton beams is an approved technique in radiotherapy and has successfully been performed at other international centres for cancer treatment, too.